Italian opera provides a perfect stage to showcase the art of soft power
Antonello De Riu says the continuing worldwide popularity of opera, one of Italy's most famous cultural products, reflects a successful strategy of projecting influence
Soft power" - the ability to project influence through means other than military might or direct economic power - is hard to define, but easy to recognise. It produces a number of virtuous feedback loops that reinforce and amplify the benefits that accrue to those that can deploy it.
In discussing soft power strategies, Asian observers often attempt to emulate the United States, whose soft power has been deployed most extensively and to greatest effect. But the US may not be the best model, for it has a number of advantages that are, in general, irreproducible by Asian places, such as being able to produce its cultural products in English, the world's global language, and having extremely large and deep domestic markets for popular-culture goods and services.
A smaller-scale and, perhaps, more improbable case study might prove more illuminating: Italian opera. Opera may not be specifically Italian - there is French, German, Russian and even English opera as well - but it is particularly Italian. This is not just a matter of history, which results in most of the terms used, from soprano to legato and coloratura, being Italian; one even cheers in Italian ("bravo").
It is also a matter of depth and breadth: at any given time, perhaps one of every two operas being performed outside Italy will be Italian. Composers from Austria (Handel, Mozart), Spain (Martín y Soler, Arrieta) and even Brazil (Gomes) wrote operas in Italian, while those operas written by Italians in other languages, notably Donizetti and Rossini's operas in French, remain part of the Italian repertoire.
The sources of soft power may be promoted and amplified by government policy but they reside somewhere deep in the people's culture - its soul, as Italians might say
Opera is very much rooted in the country of origin in the way orchestral music isn't. and Verdi, and Puccini are Italian in a way that Beethoven and his symphonies - even the ninth, which contains an entire movement of words - are not Austrian. For opera is not just words and music; it is also stories.
